1,393 research outputs found
A realist evaluation of the implementation of open visiting in an acute care setting for older people
Background
Open visiting refers to the principle of unrestricted visiting hours in the hospital setting to enable relatives, families and carers to visit at any time. There has been recognition that open visiting supports the principle of patient and family supported care and improves communication. Despite this there has been difficulty in implementing open visiting and barriers identified. The aims of this study were therefore to evaluate the implementation of open visiting, the barriers to implementation, sustainability and the impact of open visiting on communication between health care professionals, families and carers.
Methods
The study was conducted on two large acute wards for the older person. Realist evaluation methods were used to understand ‘what works well, how, for whom and to what extent.’ Mixed methods were employed including qualitative interviews and descriptive analyses of routine data sets. Following the methodology of realist evaluation, programme theories were identified a long with the context, mechanisms and outcomes of implementation, to better understand the implementation process.
Results
The results of this study identified some key findings, demonstrating that open visiting does improve communication and can help to build trusting relationships between families/carers and health care professionals (HCP). Barriers to implementation were based on the belief that it would impinge on routines within the ward setting. To achieve the principles of patient and family/carer centred care, the key mechanisms are the confidence and skills of individual nurses and health care assistants to engage with relatives/carers, whilst retaining a sense of control, particularly when care is being delivered to other patients.
Conclusion
In summary, open visiting creates a positive culture which fosters better relationships between families/carers and HCPs. Involving families/carers as partners in care does not happen automatically in an environment where open visiting is the policy, but requires engagement with staff to encourage and support relatives/carers
Modality-Agnostic Learning for Medical Image Segmentation Using Multi-modality Self-distillation
Medical image segmentation of tumors and organs at risk is a time-consuming
yet critical process in the clinic that utilizes multi-modality imaging (e.g,
different acquisitions, data types, and sequences) to increase segmentation
precision. In this paper, we propose a novel framework, Modality-Agnostic
learning through Multi-modality Self-dist-illation (MAG-MS), to investigate the
impact of input modalities on medical image segmentation. MAG-MS distills
knowledge from the fusion of multiple modalities and applies it to enhance
representation learning for individual modalities. Thus, it provides a
versatile and efficient approach to handle limited modalities during testing.
Our extensive experiments on benchmark datasets demonstrate the high efficiency
of MAG-MS and its superior segmentation performance than current
state-of-the-art methods. Furthermore, using MAG-MS, we provide valuable
insight and guidance on selecting input modalities for medical image
segmentation tasks
Multifractality in Human Heartbeat Dynamics
Recent evidence suggests that physiological signals under healthy conditions
may have a fractal temporal structure. We investigate the possibility that time
series generated by certain physiological control systems may be members of a
special class of complex processes, termed multifractal, which require a large
number of exponents to characterize their scaling properties. We report on
evidence for multifractality in a biological dynamical system --- the healthy
human heartbeat. Further, we show that the multifractal character and nonlinear
properties of the healthy heart rate are encoded in the Fourier phases. We
uncover a loss of multifractality for a life-threatening condition, congestive
heart failure.Comment: 19 pages, latex2e using rotate and epsf, with 5 ps figures; to appear
in Nature, 3 June, 199
Water resources: future Nile river flows
Climate change is projected to increase annual Nile river flow; importantly, year-to-year variability is also expected to increase markedly. More variable flows could present a challenge for consistent water resource provision in this region
Fluctuation scaling in complex systems: Taylor's law and beyond
Complex systems consist of many interacting elements which participate in
some dynamical process. The activity of various elements is often different and
the fluctuation in the activity of an element grows monotonically with the
average activity. This relationship is often of the form "", where the exponent is predominantly in
the range . This power law has been observed in a very wide range of
disciplines, ranging from population dynamics through the Internet to the stock
market and it is often treated under the names \emph{Taylor's law} or
\emph{fluctuation scaling}. This review attempts to show how general the above
scaling relationship is by surveying the literature, as well as by reporting
some new empirical data and model calculations. We also show some basic
principles that can underlie the generality of the phenomenon. This is followed
by a mean-field framework based on sums of random variables. In this context
the emergence of fluctuation scaling is equivalent to some corresponding limit
theorems. In certain physical systems fluctuation scaling can be related to
finite size scaling.Comment: 33 pages, 20 figures, 2 tables, submitted to Advances in Physic
Emotional persistence in online chatting communities
How do users behave in online chatrooms, where they instantaneously read and
write posts? We analyzed about 2.5 million posts covering various topics in
Internet relay channels, and found that user activity patterns follow known
power-law and stretched exponential distributions, indicating that online chat
activity is not different from other forms of communication. Analysing the
emotional expressions (positive, negative, neutral) of users, we revealed a
remarkable persistence both for individual users and channels. I.e. despite
their anonymity, users tend to follow social norms in repeated interactions in
online chats, which results in a specific emotional "tone" of the channels. We
provide an agent-based model of emotional interaction, which recovers
qualitatively both the activity patterns in chatrooms and the emotional
persistence of users and channels. While our assumptions about agent's
emotional expressions are rooted in psychology, the model allows to test
different hypothesis regarding their emotional impact in online communication.Comment: 34 pages, 4 main and 12 supplementary figure
PD effluent specimen collection: your questions answered
When a patient on peritoneal dialysis (PD) presents with suspected PD-related peritonitis (e.g. cloudy PD fluid and abdominal pain), one of the most important initial aspects of management is for the nephrology nurse/home dialysis nurse to collect PD effluent specimens for white blood cells count, Gram stain, culture and sensitivity for inspection and to send for laboratory testing before antibiotics are started. A review by seven members of the International Society for Peritoneal Dialysis (ISPD) Nursing Committee of all 133 questions posted to the ISPD website ‘Questions about PD’ over the last 4 years (January 2018–December 2021), revealed 97 posted by nephrology nurses from around the world. Of these 97 questions, 10 were noted to be related to best practices for PD effluent specimen collection. For our review, we focused on these 10 questions along with their responses by the members of the ISPD ‘Ask The Experts Team’, whereby existing best practice recommendations were considered, if available, relevant literature was cited and differences in international practice discussed. We revised the original responses for clarity and updated the references. We found that these 10 questions were quite varied but could be organised into four categories: how to collect PD effluent safely; how to proceed with PD effluent collection; how to collect PD effluent for assessment; and how to proceed with follow-up PD effluent collection after intraperitoneal antibiotics have been started. In general, we found that there was limited evidence in the PD literature to answer several of these 10 questions posted to the ISPD website ‘Questions about PD’ by nephrology nurses from around the world on this important clinical topic of best practices for PD effluent specimen collection. Some of these questions were also not addressed in the latest ISPD Peritonitis Guidelines. Moreover, when polling members of our ISPD Nursing Committee we found when answering a few of these questions, nursing practice varied within and among countries. We encourage PD nurses to conduct their own research on this important topic, focusing on areas where research evidence is lacking
Long-term correlations and multifractal nature in the intertrade durations of a liquid Chinese stock and its warrant
Intertrade duration of equities is an important financial measure
characterizing the trading activities, which is defined as the waiting time
between successive trades of an equity. Using the ultrahigh-frequency data of a
liquid Chinese stock and its associated warrant, we perform a comparative
investigation of the statistical properties of their intertrade duration time
series. The distributions of the two equities can be better described by the
shifted power-law form than the Weibull and their scaled distributions do not
collapse onto a single curve. Although the intertrade durations of the two
equities have very different magnitude, their intraday patterns exhibit very
similar shapes. Both detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) and detrending moving
average analysis (DMA) show that the 1-min intertrade duration time series of
the two equities are strongly correlated. In addition, both multifractal
detrended fluctuation analysis (MFDFA) and multifractal detrending moving
average analysis (MFDMA) unveil that the 1-min intertrade durations possess
multifractal nature. However, the difference between the two singularity
spectra of the two equities obtained from the MFDMA is much smaller than that
from the MFDFA.Comment: 10 latex pages, 4 figure
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